|
Dunvegan Castle
On 23 September, following the footsteps of Dr Johnson and James Boswell 213 years earlier, we made the first of our special visits to MacLeod sites, Dunvegan Castle. The seat of The MacLeod of MacLeod, chief of the clan, Johnson described the castle emphatically as the clan’s ‘centre of gravity’.
Parts of the castle, including the well and the curtain wall around the Gun Court, were built by Leod (c. 1200-1283), founder of the clan. Leod’s parentage is open to some element of doubt – traditionally he was said to have been son of Olaf the Black, Viking King of the Isle of Man, a descendant of the Norse king Harald Hardrada. In the castle, we saw the faded, almost disintegrated remains of the Fairy Flag. There are many stories of how the flag, am bratach sith, which is about 1600-1300 years old, came into the MacLeods’ possession: some say it was given them by fairies: some versions include the information that it was used by King Harald as his standard at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066.
The Dunvegan Cup was given by the O’Neils of Ulster to Rory Mor, Chief of the Clan, in about 1595, to thank him for helping them in their war against the English invaders – the original wooden vessel that is encased in silver dates back to about 900 AD. Next to it was Rory Mor’s horn, a reminder of the days when the Macleod chiefs were very much the warrior leaders of their clan. Leod acquired Dunvegan by his marriage to the heiress of the Macrailts, the Viking seneschals of Skye, who lived at Dunvegan – there is in fact evidence of a fort on the site dating back to the Dark Ages.
In 1263, King Alexander of Scotland defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Largs and gained control of the Hebrides. Leod’s heirs, Tormod and Torquil, retained control of their lands – Skye (and Harris and Glenelg) and Lewis respectively, but henceforth ruled not as Viking lords, but as Gaelic chiefs, using the name MacLeod – ‘son of Leod’.
A small boat goes out regularly from Dunvegan to the nearby isles, in the shadow of the flat-topped mountains called MacLeod's Tables, to show visitors the seals. Like Leod himself, therefore, we embarked by boat and ploughed through the crested waves to the little rocks, and there saw the seals, who in turn watched us with their baleful eyes, and I was reminded of the ancient Gaelic tradition that seals have the souls of the dead. If so, the souls that gazed out at us from the bodies of deals were those of Leod and his family, Scott’s distant forebears.
|
